SURVEY CREATOR - RANKING QUESTIONS

Summary & Best Practices

In Survey Creator, the Ranking question lets participants arrange a list of items according to preference, importance, priority, or perceived value. Participants can typically drag and drop choices or assign positions, such as ranking items from first to last. This format captures relative priorities by requiring participants to compare options directly.

When to Use It

• Identify priorities: Determine which study features, services, treatments, outcomes, or needs participants consider most important.
• Capture trade-offs: Require participants to prioritize competing options instead of rating every item highly.
• Measure relative preferences: Compare alternatives when the order of choices is more important than each item’s independent score.

When Not to Use It

• For absolute evaluations: Ranking shows order, not how strongly participants feel about each item. Use a Rating Scale or Single-Select Matrix to measure satisfaction, agreement, symptom severity, or perceived benefit independently.
• For long lists: Avoid asking participants to rank more than approximately six or seven items, as excessive choices can cause fatigue and produce less reliable responses. Consider a capped Multi-Select Dropdown or a shorter prioritized list instead.
• For simple selection: If you only need one preferred option, use a Radio Button Group or Dropdown to reduce participant effort.
• For sensitive or difficult comparisons: Avoid forcing participants to rank options that may be equally important, emotionally sensitive, or not meaningfully comparable. Provide an appropriate alternative, such as allowing ties or using individual rating questions.

Property Grid

The General properties define the question’s identity, content, behavior, and data connections. You can specify the question name (backend value), title (survey label), and description; control whether the question is visible, read-only, or required; add a comment box for additional respondent feedback; and enable selective ranking. These settings also allow you to connect the question to a Multi Select Custom Variable.

The Choice Options properties control the answer choices available in the question. You can add, edit, remove, reorder, or randomize choices, and manage their underlying values and respondent-facing text separately. These settings also allow you to copy choices from another question, add special options such as Other or None, and include a Clear button so respondents can remove their selection.

Layout properties control how the question appears on the survey page. They let you place the question on a new line, hide its number, and determine whether it is collapsed or expanded. You can also adjust the alignment of the question title, description, and error messages, as well as control the question’s indentation and width. The settings also include the number of columns used to display the answer choices, allowing you to present them vertically or across multiple columns.

The Conditions properties control the question’s behavior based on survey responses or other conditions. You can determine when the question becomes visible, read-only, or required; set or reset its value; and define default values using expressions. These settings also allow you to hide the question when no choices are available and control when individual choices are visible or selectable.

Data properties control how a Ranking question stores and uses response data. You can enter a Join identifier to associate related data, set a default answer, define or change the correct answer for evaluation, and clear the current answer when needed. You can also choose whether display values appear in dynamic text, determine whether values from questions hidden by conditional logic are cleared, and specify another property in which to store the ranking responses.

The Validation properties ensure that respondents provide acceptable answers. You can add validation rules to check whether responses meet specific requirements, such as a required format or value range. This section also allows you to customize the error message displayed when a required question is left unanswered.